


Lens of Scotch

by Eyrdamun



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), M/M, Thirst only, post true ending, time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-06 23:56:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18227144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eyrdamun/pseuds/Eyrdamun
Summary: Akechi drowns his inhibitions at the bottom of a glass, with Ren by his side.





	Lens of Scotch

The low lighting blinds him of his surroundings. It affects his hearing, or maybe that's the alcohol imbued in his system, but the once loud ambience of the bar quieted down to a background susurrus. Akechi swirls the scotch in his glass with a flick of his wrist. He sees in his peripheral the ice clinking, its sound lost somewhere in the space between it and him. He’s drifting in the fog in his head that’s leaking out of his pores and into the surrounding atmosphere. Or maybe that's just cigarette smoke painting everything hazy and unnecessary. Everything, but the center of his focus.

And Ren smiles from his seat there. Innocent, yet not, and Akechi finds himself resenting not going to a different bar. Maybe one with private booths, just because.

“Are you back to this plane of existence?” Ren leans forward, tone conspiratorial. Through the smell of ashes, rich coffee and cheap soap tease Akechi's nostrils. A small thought in the back of his head taints him. “I think you should try some water now.”

Akechi’s voice leaves him in a gravely grumble barely louder than the whispers tickling his veins, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ren's baritone dances sensually in his ears, not for the first time. Never tor the last, no matter how much Akechi prays for it.“Heard it's good for you.”

But Akechi isn't praying right now. He always takes a break from it under the cover of the night, usually with the moon and cold air as his only company. He goads the devil in front of him to give him more of that timbre, the one that strikes a match effortlessly, the one flowing electricity into his guts.

“How funny.”

He swallows the remainder of the scotch. The momentary comfort of the physical burn dissipates too quickly and Akechi is left with the heat in his bones. A usual affair, no matter how hard he tries to avoid.

“It's getting late. We should start heading back now.”

It’s what he deserves. Akechi orders a refill.

“Really? You're lucky Mona isn't a real cat, or you'd have to stumble your way home.”

Ren rocks in his seat. The low lighting catches, latches, onto Ren and makes him pop out from the smoke dancing up in the air. The weak light bulbs illuminate in awkward angles at times, they highlight the ugly ridges of his wrists and brings to attention the few needle thin dots at the side of his neck. All of what Akechi wants unseen flickering in and out of his perception and jumping out to him all the more. They are all marks on once virgin skin that should have never been there.

An affront to his sight.

Uncaring, Ren’s lips curve over his maw. From the nothing that exists on the counter, Ren raises one slim hand and his long nails glimmer like ebony claws. It's a trick of the light, Akechi's drunken mind manages to explain. He concentrates on the crookedness of Ren’s pinky finger, on a small hair thin battle scar trailing down the phalanges of the finger. The line curves around the digit, its end out of sight. It’s a delicate thing, the writing of grand mystical adventures that litters all of their bodies. Ren’s mouth opens, a siren song orders an alcoholic drink.

The apple of his eye.

Akechi blinks as Ren turns to him. His dark curls bounce lightly with the motion, snares and snakes beckoning him to lose a hand amidst the danger lurking in the dark that flames cannot illuminate. The alcohol born fire in Akechi’s veins and stomach attempts the futile regardless, the need on his tongue and teeth is desire to drink from a pond he poisoned himself. He does as Ren talks, his words an unintelligible melody that has him scooting closer, leaning forward.   
  
He’s hooked on his vice, his glass is suspiciously empty save for ice.

Ren smiles anew, reveals porcelain teeth that gleam and Akechi stares. He stares at the imperfections in his teeth- at the few crooked bones that rebel against the image of a picture perfect smile.

“Hey.” The word flutters from the teeth he wants to trace with his fingers until they fall prey to the bait and bite him. A simple word, it presses into the back of his neck and reels him in. He finds himself echoing it, drunk on the alcohol he can smell on Ren's breath.

When did he get so close?

“Wow, you really should have taken it -” Ren's breath hitches “-slower,” he finishes as he circles Akechi's wrist with his claws and pulls it away.

He doesn't know when his traitorous hand ended on Ren's thigh. He frowns at the appendage, the sensation of the warm body registering in waves in his addled mind. His hand feels sensitive. Warm. His fingers twitch reflexively in the air, wanting. It’s an empty feeling, hungry scorch.

Akechi switches hold of his new order of scotch to ice his palm.

“After this, I'm taking you home. Before you do something stupid. Or something you'd regret. Either or.”

“ ‘M not a child,” he mumbles in a slur and through a small smile. He doesn’t know why he makes such a face, he blames Ren. “Have you missed me this much?”

“Don’t be a dick.” Ren’s drink is in a tall glass, a colourful liquid reminiscent of the aposematism Ren himself lacks. His lips curl nonchalantly around a matching straw, Akechi doesn’t have the presence of mind to avert his gaze.

He observes the liquid rise and the bobbing of an Adam’s apple.

“What’s with you and disappearing all of a sudden anyway?”

Akechi remembers his glass, he forgets other things. Their echoes feel important, like the teachings of guilt. But there’s no room for that, no room to recall those lessons, so he still replies, “Not on purpose.”

An overly dramatic roll of eyes chides him as Ren plays with the condensation accumulating on his glass. He trails a path upwards, slowly and too lightly with a lone digit- the finger only close enough for the moisture to gather on long nails and leave no fingerprints behind.

His mouth feels dry.

“Goro.” Storm grey bores into his red irides when Akechi finally looks up. He feels the clouds pouring over, a shiver breaks down his spine. He’d open his mouth if he had half a mind. “Don’t be a stranger. It’s a couple of years too late for that, don’t you think?”

He snorts into his scotch on the rocks to dispel the bile crawling up his throat. He swallows it down and it goes back to its rightful place, just behind and slightly to the left of his breastbone. “Work was rather eventful.”

“Oh, then thank you for finding the time to grace me with your presence.” Ren’s grin is playful and its sight tastes like gasoline.

His heart drums intoxicated, it chases impossibilities and buries its fingers in their throats. It holds them close, closer with every gentle word Ren speaks into his addled mind. The fog deepens, the bar dies in smoke around them and nothing matters.

Nothing matters at all-

Not when Ren regards him tender, a gaze that bruises his whole body and keeps him pinned in place. Akechi confuses the melting ice of his drink that drips down his hand for blood. And he finds he doesn’t mind. He finds that he can’t, Ren gently pries his fingers from the glass and the siren song of the depths reverberates in his tympan once more.

His limbs are tied, spider silk knotted to his joints and leading to the web Ren casts with his tongue.

“Let’s get you home, for real.”

Akechi laughs as he is pulled up, his arm hooked over the other’s shoulders as another arm wraps around his waist. Ren is so warm against him, flesh and blood, bones and threats, curse and promise all spun into one mortal form- Akechi wants to bask in him. He makes no pretenses to himself and leans fully on the body of a tipsy devil as he is escorted out of the bar.

Outside, the street swims, but the colours pop without the cigarette fumes filling the air. Yet he can’t pay attention to them. He stumbles and so does his companion. Akechi splays his free hand on Ren’s pec like a joke but keeps it there as dark eyebrows burrow.

Akechi doesn’t know how to translate the stuttering heartbeat under his palm. But he knows, he is certain, he wants to sink his teeth into it and carve his name over and over until it escapes the cage of ribs, stumbles up a curved spine to come out distorted with the high of apogee from chapped lips. The images that play behind his eyelids with every blink, the promises he held onto too many nights for no innocent prospects infest each and every single one of his nerves with phantom touches.

Ren grunts besides him from the exertion of carrying his bigger form. The scotch in Akechi’s system twists the sound, feeds him more-

“C’mon, you can’t be so drunk that you can’t walk at all.”

Akechi drinks in the alcohol from Ren’s breath. It tastes like fruits. Akechi’s intake of breath is too loaded now, an extra layer of meaning and intimacy he wants to reap with clumsy fingers to dress himself with. The pulse drums under his hold still, but his own heart drums louder.

Its beat is a forbidden knowledge, he listens to it carefully. Akechi lets it drive him mad.

He bets Ren’s heartbeat would taste like fruit too, were he to lick it off the sweat on his skin.

Akechi’s arm slides off Ren’s shoulders to tread down his back. Half formed thoughts and ideas trickled down the nerves of his biceps to the tips of his fingers. They dictate their path, summon a shiver from the form they explore until spider silk stops them-

Ren’s claws are wrapped around his wrist again and pull him up. The digits of his fingers kiss the hips they clutched goodbye, they leave another caress at his waist and arm. Once he is back to his original position, the grip on his wrist stays. It’s an old friend, one he remembers from when the sun shines down on him and Ren.

They sway on in their drunken asynchrony towards the same four walled goal and a mess of light tongue tied chatter.

Ren closes the door to Akechi’s apartment with his foot softly. The click takes a second to register, the sound of his door locking as Ren takes off his shoes even longer and his glassy eyes can’t focus on the interior of his home at all.

Ren moves and the eldritch muscular organ that used his own hand and flesh as a vehicle of poison is no longer under his grasp. It’s cold against the door, even with Ren’s body close enough for his body heat to envelop his own body.

His stomach grumbles soundlessly.

And he thinks- he thinks he had full meals throughout the day. He thinks he should be fine, it’s hard to remember and concentrate. His apartment’s lighting is an enemy. It forces him to find the other in the semi darkness, to approach and push down on the coil he finds. They huddle in a crook, the doorknob digs against Akechi uselessly. A thorn of the side of an animal shadowed by a veil.

It’s quiet, his palm presses against the surface he leans on, pushing farther. It still clasps the ghost of a singing heart.

“Need me t’leave already?” Ren smiles from where he rests on the wall. His cooling gaze reflects light and commands Akechi’s attention in the nothingness left to see. The affability in the clouds only feeds the fire the scotch blazes in his veins. “So rude.”

It can survive storms, Akechi theorizes. Ren blinks a challenge. “Can you even make it home?”

“I’m only _sliiiightly_ tipsy.”

He has the audacity to laugh. A low rumble that lures Akechi’s organs out of his flesh just so that Ren could have the comfort to wear him. He could fashion his body into a shawl, a suit, that could slide over Ren’s skin and read the tales imperceivable to the untrained eye that the Metaverse journey seared. He could carve jewelry from his bones to decorate the Ren’s body.

He could, but he wants something much more selfish.

The black snakes that parade as curls atop his head bounce with the sound, they remind him how he read once, a long time ago, that snakes were attracted to bass.

“You…” Akechi finds the words at the base of his throat, uncooperative. They weight down his vocal chords, turn him a simmering mess under Ren's searching eyes.

“Goro?”

_You mess me up._

Akechi's mouth and teeth clash unexpectedly into Ren's cheek instead of his mouth. And he fights the gentle grip crushing his jaw holding him there, pushing him away. Akechi’s nose and lips drag across Ren's skin as they fail to seek out full, slightly chapped lips he kisses in his dreams.

Akechi stays pressed against Ren, immobilized in the soft touch. The rejection palpable in the air as Ren refuses to turn to him with a light barrier.

“Maybe if you were sober.”

“Ren,” the name tastes toxic on his tongue, and so much better than the alcohol he indulged. He's always been a man that flirted with the dark.

“Don't. I don't-” This close, Akechi thinks he sees Ren's eye cloud over. He hears the hitch in Ren’s breath against his cheek, it sounds like the rush of blood. “You're drunk.”

“Ren-”

“Go to sleep. We'll see in the morning.”

He is pushed back gently by Ren stepping forwards, a pair of arms supporting him when he stumbles backwards and into his own hallway. They are bathed in shadows, just like the rest of his apartment, and he is lowered into them. The darkness fills his senses as his eyes clench shut and he presses closer against Ren with deep breaths.

The heat greets him like a mocking temptress, rich coffee and cheap soap wash over him and into him. This close, this near, there’s an underlying scent of cat and spices that stays with him even after Ren gently lowers him into his bed.

Akechi’s hand shoots forward. The scent stays in his lungs, it asphyxiates him and-

It’s not a bad way to go.

He’ll let Ren drown him. Just as long as he can drown him back.

There’s a thud as Akechi’s hand falls into the mattress, a distinct huff and a weight against Akechi’s chest in the shape of a hand that he allows the alcohol to guide behind his shut eyes.

There’s noise outside his room, he chooses to ignore it and focuses only on the touch and the air filling his lungs.

It's just his inhibition anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot how to write thirst y'all


End file.
